Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Each year I like to do a look back and try to make sense of the themes of the last twelve months, trends, culture, politics and life. This is my observations about 2013 and some of my favorite things from this year by category. Some of these may get fleshed out into longer posts, others not so much.

Trend: We have come to know Big Brother

I remember reading a couple years back an editorial in 2600, The Hacker's Quarterly, with the theme of "We've Won". The idea was that in 2012 or so, most people - if they want to - carry a powerful computer in their pocket that can talk to anyone else on the planet relatively cheap - if they choose to do so. This was one of the primary long term goals of old-school hackers - power to the people to utilize this wonderful, beautiful thing called "The Network" to at least some of its potential and it happened. This is not only technically feasible, it has achieved cultural penetration into our consciousness to the point where an 80 year old grandma reaching into her pocket to check her supercomputer because her son doing an engineering project halfway around the world just posted a picture of something he thought she should see on Facebook is no longer a "Whoa!" but just an accepted fact of everyday life. We are living in a Cyberpunk novel and it's wonderful.

I hope you brought your mirrorshades and pink leather trenchcoat

We have also accepted the ugly. That interaction was monitored a half-dozen ways by the United States alone (and maybe other nations' intelligence agencies along the way). Companies along the way are cooperative, coerced, or bribed to circumvent or allow for the circumvention of every "privacy" setting most of us ever think to enable or install. And, just as we have ingrained the ways technology has enabled us to do amazing things with ease, we have passively learned to love Big Brother.

Culture matters, and in many of the popular blockbuster films and television over the last several years and decades, we have seen "Heroes" access all manner of information to "Get the Bad Guy" with little, if any, haggling over whether or not taking all of this information was legal or moral. The NCIS team gets big data to lead them to the bad guy every week, Tony Stark or SHIELD doesn't fool around with all this "Due Process" nonsense, they get the data they need and save the day and that's all there is to it. Big Data saving the day is the entire premise of "Person of Interest" where the ultimate computer nerd and ass-kicking-CIA-Jesus team up to do the bidding of Big Data who is alive and who loves us and looks out for us.

The Passion of Big Brother

Culture matters, and our culture has been selling us super people with secret identities who save the day outside of the law for a long time. Just as 24, Taken, and Zero-Dark-Thirty led us to identify with a protagonist who tortures people, decades of stories in our culture have led us to identify with a protagonist, or entire team of them, who benevolently surveil us for our own good.

The reality, and bless Edward Snowden for shining a light on this, is that this information has been used widely beyond stopping terrorism, AND that it has not had much verifiable success IN its one and ONLY publicly accepted goal. It costs Billions and is used to gather evidence for the DEA (and likely others) then scrubs the evidence of its involvment. Unlike our worlds of fiction, this is not always a force for good and the time to discuss if this is the best, or even a wise, use of our resources is long overdue.

Person of the Year: Edward Snowden

This is the photo everyone has used for this guy for the last year

For the reasons listed above.

Book (Fiction):
Wages, Future Tales of a Hired Gun by Zach Parsons. Non-apocalypse future is the hardest kind to write. It's easier to imagine a future that throws back to the past than one that boldly forges ahead. This uses various future settings to make commentary on present events, getting sillier as we head towards the future, but I loved it all.

Book (NonFiction):
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Silver writes a GREAT book about making better predictions and it is engaging from cover to cover.
(Last Year, Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes)

Movies: Much to say...
Biggest Grossing of the Year:
Iron Man 3

Big and Fun:
Pacific Rim

Big and Serious:
Gravity

More Serious:
Assault on Wall Street
(Uwe Boll made a movie that will make you cry. I am not joking.)

Weird Indie Movie:
John Dies at the End.

Trend in Movies #1: Class Warfare on the big screen. Hunger Games is a rather obvious embodiment of this theme, but so was Elysium and Now You See Me. Audiences LOVE watching the wealthy and smug have their wealth redistributed against their will on the big screen. This is the entire premise of Assault on Wall Street and it WORKS.

Trend in movies #2:Let's admit it, the Old Guys are Old. Sly and Arnold made a film that no one went to see because we aren't living in 1987. Arnold made a movie (The Last Stand) that no one went to see. The Last Die hard was likely the last Die Hard, and White House Down was a better Die Hard than the last Die Hard movie. The Lone Ranger did only OK. Oblivion did only OK. Yup, Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp are hovering around 50 years old.

On his way home to catch Matlock before eating dinner at 4:30pm

Other Movie Mentions with One Sentence or So:

Warm Bodies
(Somehow a Zombie movie is original in 2013)
The End of the World
(So much brilliance and silliness all in one film).
Oz Great and Powerful
(I love every Army of Darkness reference and it is awesome).
Pain And Gain
(Oh.. Michael Bay is a genius, we forget that)
The Purge
(Concept horror. I love it)
Superman
(For the first time we see a Blue Collar Superman... this is strongly in contrast to Billionaire Bruce Wayne)
World War Z
(Not at all like the book but a good movie still)
Elysium, Now You See Me, and Hunger Games
(As mentioned above)
You're Next
(Home Alone: The Reckoning)
Prisoners
(Whoa... torture is... bad?)
Frozen and The Croods
(Family Animation I actually liked)
Wolf of Wall Street
(Scorsese and DiCaprio tell a great story about a sociopath but go read this too)

(My 2012 Movies were The Avengers and Cabin in the Woods for a Joss Whedon Sandwich.)

Television: Breaking Bad Basing this on it being talked about more than any other. The Joke alternate ending is out there and great too.

If you got this joke in its entirety, you are OLD

(2012 Pick, Life with Louie)

Video Games:THE YEAR OF NEXT GEN!, but really "Meh"

Video Game Trend #1)Next Gen is HERE!!!! With features that I can't justify spending the money on, with games that I cannot yet justify spending the money on. At E3 this year the new
generation of consoles had features fans flat out rejected until things were changed, so there is that.

Video Game Trend #2)The PC is BACK as a serious game platform This owes much to distribution systems (Steam, GOG, Etc...). They make it more reliable, Cheaper, with more time having fun playing games and less time fiddling with settings. We finally have an option to play old games other than piracy.

Best Video Game:Shadowrun, at least for me, because I have been waiting for a sequel to Shadowrun on the SNES for 20 years. This was a big validation of the Kickstarter method to actually make a working, commercially viable game.

Other Games with Sentence or So:Another Year of Sequels!
Saints Row IV
(This managed to be fun and parody so many things)
Grand Theft Auto V
(A big event every release)
BioShock: Infinite
(This would actually be Bioshock III in standard naming conventions but this one is supposed to be a prequel)
Arkham Origins
(This would ALSO actually be a "III" in standard naming conventions and this one is supposed to be a prequel)
Metal Gear Solid: Revengence:
(I have no idea what this would be numbered... does anyone?)

Personal Technology:Smart Watches... anybody use those? Those are a thing now I guess.

A realization we have finally come to: Companies whose business model is dependent on their employees getting Food or Health Care from the state or community in order to survive to work another day... are every bit as much on the public tit as their poverty wages employees. This needs to end. If "Always Low Prices" means "But your local food pantry will need more donations" then forget it. Competent business people do not need to force employees into desperate grinding poverty in order to make a profit. Most companies do well paying living wages. There is no need for desperate poverty for those who work full time.

Another discussion we are finally having: Workplace safety is a real concern, for those who work there, for the community around it, and it should be a global concern. The horrible tragedies in Bangladesh this year reminds many of us of the Triangle Shirtwaist incident that moved worker safety into the political sphere and eventually gave some of us the safe workplaces we have today. The explosion in West, Texas, and the lack of accountability, oversight, compensation, or change in ANY of those things afterwords also reminds us that we need to address this at home too.

A third thing long overdue:Death of "The Middle". We are finally taking note how the "Sensible, Serious, Consensus" and so on is actually quite far outside the normal. Our Overton Window of acceptable political positions should not be determined solely by a handful of rich, comfortable, beltway commentators with inescapable conflicts of interest. Not only do they not represent the views of the "average joe" whom they tend to believe they understand, but they aren't a particularly smart, honest, or articulate groups of human beings. For years Very Serious People like George Will and David Brooks were understood to add no value to any conversation by a handful of hyper-literate political junkies. In 2013, we ALL seemed to be coming around.

I needed a graphic here and I am getting tired

Big news items that were covered well:
The Affordable Care Act's next phase:
(Some bugs on the rollout, but over a million people have signed up for private health insurance from an exchange and over a million have signed up for Medicaid in an expansion state)

End of the Senate Filibuster
(On nominations anyhow)

An actual budget!
(But it looks like there is institutionalization of the Sequester funding levels, so not so good.)

First Egyptian Snow in a century or so.
(Even if the pictures we all shared were fake)

New Pope!
(First Resignation in centuries! New Pope has no history I know of involving either actively protecting pedophile nor of collaboration with the Nazis, which puts him far and away above the last two)

One WTC is Completed!
(Only 12 years after 9/11 a complete structure has replace the "Freedom Hole" in Downtown Manhattan)

Big News Items that Should have been covered well but weren'tGOOGLE THESE IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD OF THEM
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty!
(Remember when we at least had big discussions about NAFTA and GATT? Remember Seattle?)

The NDAA!
(MORE Executive Power to detain, spy, and kill in secret?)

The Bradley/Chelsea Manning Sentence
(The sentencing of MANY Hackers this year, from parts of Anonymous to the people who opened StratFor's files to the world. Snowden is wise to stay away from authority)

Stories that DIDN'T happen despite old clueless people predicting they would:
Shortly after bringing women into combat arms and letting gays serve openly in the military... THE MILITARY HAS COLLAPSED INTO A CHAOS!

Shortly after allowing gay marriage in several states... WE NOW HAVE LEGAL BESTIALITY AND POLYGAMY!!! MULTIPLE ANIMAL MARRIAGES ARE HALF OF ALL NEW WEDDINGS AT THIS POINT!!! CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER!!!

Shortly after some states legalize Marijuana for recreational use... THE STATES HAVE DESCENDED INTO A DRUG FUELED CHAOS!!! CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL!!! WEST DENVER EMBROILED IN THE "CHEETOH WARS" OF 2013!!! THE BILLIONS SPENT AND YEARS LOST TO THE DRUG WAR WERE JUSTIFIED!!!

Well, this is by far my longest post of 2013. Happy New Year to everyone who has read any of my stuff and I hope to see you around in 2014 too!

Before growing a Taliban beard, he was apparently attending Bayside High School with Slater and Screech

Even if it turns out this story isn't entirely accurate (I would like to know where they got the photos and how they are certain they are attributed correctly) I still feel vindicated that many others are coming around to the obvious publicity-stunt-by-way-of-manufactured-controversy nature of what happened last month.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Taking a Break with the Family for Christmas

Thank you to everyone who read anything I've posted over the last few months. Seeing your views double, then double again, and again really encourages a person to keep writing, editing, researching, and improving.

I leave you all with this, evidence that the dirty atheist communist multicultural conspiracy to replace "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays" that some people believe is just pure malarkey pushed by Fox News and Talk Radio with little to no truth behind any of it.... goes ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE 1950s!

BING CROSBY AND FRANK SINATRA WERE IN ON IT!

(As a sidebar, I never understood what the audience response is supposed to be on those "WAR ON CHRISTMAS!" bits. If you buy some jewellery from Mr. Yurman and get a Falafel from Mr. Ahmed and they wish you "Happy Holidays!" or, god forbid, "Happy Channakah" or "Ramadan Kareem" are the Fox Viewers supposed to boycott their shops or come back and break the glass in their windows or something? I never got what the implied action step is in those narratives.)

No. That does not feed the beast. That doesn't generate enough viewers, "shares" or "clicks". The beast needs endless idiocy for idiots to consume. It needs to generate things that make the morons feel the need to wail and the smug feel the need to comment on (That's me!). There is another class that struggles to ignore the hose of idiocy fired their way by our culture 24/7, but I am not that enlightened.

The Idiocy this week is the interview a Duck Dynasty cast member gave in a promoted interview to GQ magazine. Phil Robertson, who plays the role of the "Patriarch" of the cast of the Duck Dynasty show, chose to make anti-gay statements in an interview in a national magazine known for fashion and liberal politics. This generated a response from many of the members of the majority of our society that do not harbor any special animosity to homosexuals. This was followed by a hideous non-apology, an attempt to use some paraphrased old testament bible verses to justify his position, and other actions and responses that are well documented here. Eventually A&E took action and "Suspended" actor Phil Robertson from playing his character for a season.

The other characters on other programs responded as the play went on. You see them ready to squeeze into the limelight at a moment's notice - ready to read their lines in an attempt to desperately grasp a little more of that attention they have learned to turn into money. Pretend Politicians like Sarah Palin and Hermann Cain, Pretend Ministers like Bryan Fischer, Fake Journalists like Todd Starnes, Sean Hannity and other FOX characters. The entire menagerie of miscreants who play roles for the more hateful half of America came out to recite their lines. I am personally surprised that Pretend Business Expert, Pretend Boss, and Pretend Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has not yet been trotted out to make his obligatory supportive statement.

As far as publicity moments go, this is a good one. Pretend controversy guarantees that even the least enlightened and least creative can participate in the conversation by having opinions they do not have to defend, justify, explore, or even come up with on their own. This phenomenon was on display just last September regarding Miley Cyrus and "Twerking". It worked well then too, I noted. This is a win for the Duck Dynasty cast, as they are paid $200,000 an episode to be split among family members and if one is "suspended" the family does not lose one single dime. This may put the network in a tough spot - they might lost some viewers if they do not reverse the suspension, but I doubt that Phil will be unsuspended, and also doubt that any measurable part of the fan base will turn away from the show. So, likely a big win with this stunt.

This also allows Mr. Robertson to focus on playing his character at other venues. These include Right Wing or Religious speaking engagements, a possible "Contributor" gig with Fox News or ClearChannel Radio, a 100% chance to run the FoxPublican "news" circuit and religious networks promoting his show (Expected interview statement "I felt obligated to speak the truth in the bible even it might cost me everything" he will say shortly before promoting the show and various other projects that make him money). Somewhere there exist people who can listen to this, nod their head at this "genuine heartfelt wisdom" and not realize they are the suckers whose attention, time, and money keeps the scam machine going.

I don't have a problem with reality television. Television will always have hours of stupid to fill. Maury is till seeing who the real father is, there are still fake courtrooms and fake judges, there is still Fox News. Sturgeon's law that 90% of everything is crap still applies. We get the culture we deserve.

What I DO have a problem with is that some of us don't realize this, all of this, is fake.

Do you remember growing up and meeting that kid who thought professional wrestling was real? It was an inevitable byproduct of the methods of professional wrestling that very young or very slow children will believe professional wrestling is real. Characters who play professional wrestlers are contractually required to practice Kayfabe, meaning they must remain in character whenever appearing promotionally or even when recognized in public by a fan. If Hulk Hogan wished to promote a product while under contract, he could not do it under his birth name of Terry Gene Bollea, he would have to do so under the name of "Hulk Hogan" and in character.

To do otherwise would be tasteless.

Kayfabe is a necessary part of wrestling, carnival freak shows, reality television, and other entertainment establishments of impeccable quality. This still does not bother me - usually only children or the mentally challenged accept such acts as "real". Here is where I am concerned... there are far too many of us who accept the actors in the never ending farce as human beings legitimately expressing their unrehearsed thoughts and feelings. The fictional reality constructed by Media establishments such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, or Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal have embraced the Kayfabe to such an extent that their consumers can no longer tell when the act ends and reality begins. Sarah Palin says her part, playing into the fake reality where a publicity seeking television actor is a genuine folksy American being persecuted by the big gay conspiracy for the crime of being a Christian - and that's fine - that is as expected as Macho Man Randy Savage trash talking his opponent before a match. But soon after REAL politicians such as Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz have felt the need to play roles in this play as well. There are millions of Americans (including possibly your grandparents) taking to "The Facebook" and AOL accounts to "Share" and "Like" and forward chain emails in support of the phony struggle being waged in the play before them. Kids interning as "Social Media Experts" of something similar are spamming websites and Facebook pages for actual political groups and even political parties with support for their wrestler in the ring tonight.

Because a network not paying someone they don't like is "Censorship"

There are REAL struggles that REAL political and cultural groups should be weighing in on. There is going to be a struggle to succeed or fail at extending unemployment benefits in a few days, there is going to be a fight around raising the debt limit to pay for spending congress has already approved in a couple of weeks. There are always economic, health, political and technology stories that absolutely will impact our lives and that we SHOULD be discussing and sharing and learning from each other about. Emotionally investing in one staged struggle after another is exhausting to your soul. There needs to be some caring left over for you family, your work, and your community. The False World that somewhere around 27% of our culture is living in is killing us. It is killing our ability to have a functioning government it is destroying our ability to have a functional economy. It is stealing our lives one stupid minute at a time.

We get the culture we deserve... but I thing we can change our behavior to deserve better, to GET better. Let's not play our roles as passive observers and consumers and hosts to the latest mind virus. Let's challenge the whole system. Let's plant the seed this time, and the next time, when something so blatantly staged is injected into our national culture. If someone says "It's horrible what they did to Phil!" respond with "And it was terrible what The Undertaker did to that muscular man-pantied fellow in that cage match that one time!". If someone states how the Duck Dynasty people are being persecuted for being Christian, mention how it was sad witnessing Stone Cold Steve Austin suffering with alcoholism. Fakery not worthy of the belief of children needs to be known as such.

Maybe this would work. Maybe, on the other hand, this is the best we will ever deserve. There is a frightening trend of professional wrestling fans and devotees of certain political affiliations (That rhyme with "funservative") being of the same membership and tendencies in beliefs. The wife of the head of World Wrestling Entertainment ran for the Senate in Connecticut and now works with a consultancy in Washington D.C.. The WWE had a presence at The 2008 Republican National Convention. The overlap is so strong that the WWE had to have a rare moment in which they needed to break Kayfabe to inform angry Glenn Beck fans that Wrestling is performed by characters and that their struggles are not real. You can view the video here via the Majority Report.

So, short version: Tomorrow, when every homophobe that is showing the early signs of dementia that you know finds a way to email, text, facebook, or pony express you to draw attention to how Phil "Duck Dynasty" Robertson was illegally poked in the eye by AE "Big Gay" Media in last week's title match... remind them it's fake.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

I need to become inspired to write more. The purpose of blogging to me has always been threefold.

1) Practice Writing - every post is out there to be judged, critiqued, evaluated, argued with, responded to or ignored. This is true for the audience AND to author (upon revisions and other future visits.) No practice is better than doing and the only coest is time.

2) Articulation - Many forums out there - Facebook, Email, Comments sections and so on, do not lend themselves to longer and more thoughtful pieces describing one's thoughts, opinions, or random brain droppings as well as a blog. This was the reason for my first post.

3) Documentation - I like that I leave a footprint my future self or others can use to go back and see what I was writing/thinking/doing at a given time. This was more the purpose of my first blog MrVetinari that I started back in Baghdad in 2004 or so.

These are all fine motivations, there is only one problem, for any of them to be achieved, I have to, you know, actually write in the thing. One blog I follow had a good suggestion, which was to put "Updated Every (Tuesday or something)" at the top to always keep a sense of desperation going. It's a good enough idea, bloggers who have forced themselves to write weekly have managed to get enough material to have a book or other project they can piece together out of their writings.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Tomorrow, many of the offices at the local Air Force Base can re-open. Tomorrow my dedicated and smart friends who work for the Federal Government will return to work. Tomorrow professional staff can begin maintaining the grounds, bathrooms, and such of our National Monuments and National Parks. Tomorrow the VA can begin processing the several weeks of claims that were delayed (even more) by the shut down. Tomorrow the States who ran out of WIC funds to get baby food for impoverished infants can continue their mission.

Nov 1st, US Treasury Bonds will be honored. Disabled Veterans will get their disability checks. Food Stamps, TANF, and Heating Assistance will continue to be administered by the States at their mandated levels. People will not needlessly starve or freeze in a nation that can afford to prevent it. Head Start schools will stay open.

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) remains the law of the land in the United States of America.

Congress has succeeded in doing the bare minimum to keep things open. (A continuing resolution). Due to agreed-upon talks, they may actually pass a budget this year.

No one "Won". Some people took a serious financial hit, our Markets took a financial hit, our reputation as a functional dependable nation took a hit, our military lost training and professional development time they won't get back, some of our Vets will have additional delays in getting the benefits earned by service to our country. This was a loss for everyone involved. Closing and re-opening things, backpay, and deferring things that need to to be done cost money. The shutdown cost Taxpayers between 5 and 25 Billion dollars. Some lost more dignity and reputation than others, but there were no winners.

The childish, harmful, expensive, and embarrassing waste of time that was the shut-down is over for a few months.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

OK, this is just a place I can write something a little more elaborate than Facebook, Twitter, Texting, Email or so on. I wanted to answer this question in more detail.

Maria, you asked "I'm curious of your thoughts on this since you are someone who is into sociology and politics alike. How can an idealistic newcomer to Washington (the ones who do have that genuine desire to make this a better place) survive..." and I will do my best to answer that, also with the issue of hyper-partisanship and with how the corruption begins in the first place.

Making policy for a nation of more than 300 million people, with trading and diplomatic relationships with every other nation on Earth, in a land that varies from swamp to desert, from mountaintops to beaches, from literally the wealthiest people on Earth to communities poorer and less healthy than anywhere else in the industrialized world, in a nation that has produced both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as NINE seasons of the series Family Matters - all with legal foundations written when no one on Earth had travelled faster than a horse could ride.... it is a challenge that requires a broad and brilliant skill set.

Someone right now is trying to "Monetize Facebook User Data" and possibly will make millions doing that - others will feel their images are being used without their consent or compensation - and the lawmakers who have to deal with this will be dealing with concepts that did not exist 10 years ago, let alone 20, or 50, or 100. People will have legal disagreements with everything from robotic drone aircraft, genetically modified organisms, financial derivatives traded by semi-autonomous algorithms, and other stuff that our imaginations haven't yet conceived of.

Like a TENTH season of Family Matters?

Adapting the legal code to address these new issues does, and will, require a specific amazing set of skills that understands these issues, understands the responsibilities and limits of our government, and can call together and respect the needs of vastly different groups of people. To willingly jump into such a challenging task is a higher calling that should direct some of the best and the brightest to where they are needed.

That's what is needed to serve. An ENTIRELY different skill set is required to get elected. Being the best at running a campaign is how we select our legislators and that skill set is, to say the least... different.

THIS SKILL SET

I could get more into detail about primaries, climbing party ranks, pandering to a base, running to the middle, staff, polling, incestuous relationships with media and so on, but I want to focus on something we overlook more.

Elected officials at the National Level, and even at the State level in many states, are in "Campaign Mode" every day. All the big money, moral compromises and dirty tricks we associate with campaigning during a short campaign season now go on from before day one until the day an elected official leaves office. This has a DEVASTATING effect on the ability of people to focus on things that will not bring in donations, support, or media attention... AND is has a devastating effect on what kind of people can stomach the job.

A young Senator named Barack Obama once commented something to the effect that he spent many hours a day with the kind of people who could write $50,000 campaign checks, and he wondered what impact it would have on his view of the world as he spent more time with THAT crowd than with the working-hard-but-getting-nowhere people he wanted to serve by becoming a Senator. A decade later we can add another "0" to the size of the checks he needs to get people to write every day to feed the campaign beast.

Recently, a guide for new members of Congress was leaked - and it had some recommendations on how members of Congress should schedule their day:

Just FYI "Call Time" means "Asking really rich people, corporations, and groups for money to fuel the campaign beast". Only "really rich" need to be called, because who else can write a $50,000 check? Nationally elected officials need to raise tens of thousands of dollars a week, sometimes every day, if they want to fund the next campaign. There are limits to how much individuals can contribute directly to a candidate... but... there are "bundlers" who make donations through dozens or hundreds of intermediaries, there are contributions to Political Parties who then dole that money back out to candidates, there are direct media buys, and there are "Political Action Committees" who exist mostly for the purpose of circumventing limits on political spending.

Four hours a day dealing with the wealthiest of the wealthy people and causes - nearly every day for years. That's just call time, there is an entire separate series of fundraising events for the evening too. $20,000 a plate dinners, speaking engagements, private cocktail parties and so on. The quest for money never ends.

Push comes to shove there are multiple legal ways to hand a lawmaker an entire suitcase full of money (checks and electronic transfers weigh less, though). It is entirely legal to then pay your son/spouse/best friend a six or seven figure salary as a "Campaign Consultant". It is legal to use campaign funds to fly your family to Hawaii or on a limo service or even on a private jet or other even less justifiable things. It has been done, it is being done right now. It has been horrible for years, the "Citizens United" decision by the Supreme Court has turned the money hose up another notch.

We have allowed fully legalized bribery of our leaders. Only leaders who have access to millions upon millions of dollars will continue to serve in office. Bribes are not only legal, they are MANDATORY.

Your Benjamins stack must be this high to ride this ride

A couple of years ago I heard Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver speak at the James Kirkpatrick dinner in Johnson County, Missouri. He was not in the best of moods and when addressing why our Democracy had become so uncivil his response was something to the effect of "because that's what gets money". He mentioned how the Representative who yelled "You Lie!" at the 2009 State of the Union (Which is, I assure you, not the standard protocol at such an event) was NOT punished for his disrespect of the President, the Institution of the Presidency, and our rules of Decorum, but instead he did NOT lose a single place on a single committee, and - in fact - the weeks after his outburst he actually raised more money than any other member of Congress. He was REWARDED for his disreputable behavior. Should we be surprised when others try to get the spotlight on them for similar stunts? We allow our lawmakers to be bribed not only for corruption - but also they get bribed for childish stunts.

That is ONE type of legalized bribery - there are many others that we witness every day. For another example, it's perfectly legal to pay a lawmaker's spouse a salary in the hundreds of thousands or millions as a lobbyist or consultant for a group or company that has a vested interest in the laws the legislator makes. Sen. Evan Bayh's wife was paid two million dollars as an insurance company lobbyist as the Senator happened to advocate the positions she was paid to represent. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is married to a woman who used to get paid an enormous salary from The Heritage Foundation (which has a legal opinion on every case that comes before the court) and now owns her very own Lobbying/Consulting corporation which takes in millions from groups who have a vested interest in the decisions the court makes. Sen. Ted Cruz, one of the politicians deeply involved in the shut down has some inside knowledge of exactly when it will end and when markets will rebound - knowing that would make the right traders VERY rich. He happens to be married to a trader for Goldman Sachs

That covers "Bribery by Spouse". I might flesh out more types of legal bribery later, but the other biggies are "Revolving Door" (Getting hired to a multi-million gig right after you leave office, or leaving a gig like that right before you leave office - from a group who clearly benefited from your actions in office) Speaking/Consulting gigs (Getting paid huge sums to give a speech or consult for a few hours - because you are of course a REALLY awesome speaker and not at all because the group paying you to speak benefited from your actions in office) Board Memberships (Get paid ridiculously for a few hours of work a year for a corporation who really benefited from your actions in office) and rewards from media/publishers - who can promote your book or show (Many political "best sellers" were actually sales where thousands upon thousands of copies were bought by a single individual, corporation, or group). Fox News pays many former lawmakers as "Contributors". Think tanks and advocacy groups often become the road to millions for former lawmakers whose actions in office supported their positions (Former Rep. Dick Armey is the president of "FreedomWorks" which is behind about half of the Tea Party stuff out there).

How big of a deal is this "other stuff"? Let's look at two of the players during the last shut down. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich came to Washington as History Professor worth a few thousand dollars - and left his position as Speaker of the House a millionaire many times over. He had many, many paid speeches and consultancies over the years but the one that stands out as the most egracious is his being paid 1.6 Million and 1.8 Million for acting as a "Historian". Former President William Jefferson Clinton came to Washington after being the Governor of Arkansas and by no means a rich man. In 2010 he could afford to pay for his daughter's estimated three million dollar wedding.

These were men of no particular wealth or business acumen before they came to office. They now have riches beyond what all but a tiny fraction of us could ever dream of.

I am using this picture again because I was too lazy to google Scrooge McDuck's Vault

I've been writing a long time but bear with me.

In 1960, Harry Truman wrote about being offered many well-paying corporate positions as a spokesperson, consultant, board member, and so on. He said "I turned down all of those offers. I knew that they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States. I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the Presidency."

Harry Truman lived a respectable, middle class life after he left office, with ups and downs, and was grateful to have the opportunity to serve his Country. President Eisenhower followed suit - not leaving the office in abject poverty - but not becoming ridiculously rich either.

In contrast Ronald Reagan was paid 2 Million dollars by a Japanese MegaCorporation to give two speeches in Japan VERY shortly after leaving office and after 8 years of supporting trade policies that made tremendous amounts of money for Japanese MegaCorporations. George W Bush reportedly took in 15 Million Dollars in speaking fees after leaving office (again, from groups that just happened to support his actions as President). The Clintons are supposedly worth over one hundred million dollars at this point.

I have a feeling that once you enter the world of money at that level, it is addictive and you will do whatever you have to do to keep that "high". Maybe Truman and Eisenhower knew this.

This metaphor is SUBTLE

The biggest corrupting factor in our system is this big money. It fuels empty attention stunts, it corrupts our leaders, our lawmakers, our regulators (I could do a whole thing on agency heads who made ridiculous salaries from the companies they were supposed to regulate the day they left office), our policies, our journalism and even the conceptualization of what politics is in our minds.

Army NCOs are expected, nay DEMANDED, to avoid even "The Appearance of a Conflict of Interest" As they should. Rules exist to prohibit bribery in its many forms, and we expect even our poorly-paid Corporals to follow these rules.

We can never reasonably expect professionalism and dedication to duty from our highest lawmakers when they are held to a lower standard than our E-4s. If, the day after your tour of duty ended, it were perfectly legal to accept a million dollars to "give a speech" to a group of Iraqi Republican Guard who happened to escape when the absent-minded Corporal was on duty... there would be way more escapes out there. If it were permissible and common for a First Sergeant to get donations many times greater than the value of his salary if he yelled "Bullshit!" while a General Officer was giving a brief... then we could not possible sustain the kind of respect and order we have come to expect from our military.

Until we enact and enforce a comprehensive set of rules (like guidelines for NCOs) to prevent legal bribes for corrupt and childish behavior - we should expect more of it. It pays well.

If you had put in years of quiet service as a legislator, and before you left office you had the wink-wink-nod-nod offer to change a single vote or to change a few lines of language in a bill you were about to introduce - in exchange for financial security for you and your family for the rest of your life, wouldn't it be tempting? What about if ALL your peers were doing the same thing and NONE of them were being punished or even shamed for doing so?

Short Version: How are good people corrupted? They are paid millions to become corrupt. It is legal.